Pál Kitaibel (3 February 1757 – 13 December 1817) was a Hungarian

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

and chemist. He was born at Nagymarton (today Mattersburg, Austria) and studied botany and chemistry at the University of

Buda Buda (, ) is the part of Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, that lies on the western bank of the Danube. Historically, “Buda” referred only to the royal walled city on Castle Hill (), which was constructed by Béla IV between 1247 and ...

. In 1794 he became Professor and taught these subjects at Pest. As well as studying the flora and hydrography of Hungary, in 1789 he discovered the element

tellurium Tellurium is a chemical element; it has symbol Te and atomic number 52. It is a brittle, mildly toxic, rare, silver-white metalloid. Tellurium is chemically related to selenium and sulfur, all three of which are chalcogens. It is occasionally fou ...

, but later gave the credit to Franz-Joseph Müller von Reichenstein (1740–1825) who had actually discovered it in 1782. Together with Franz de Paula Adam von Waldstein (1759–1823), he wrote ''Descriptiones et icones plantarum rariorum Hungariae'' ("Descriptions and pictures of the rare plants of Hungary"; M. A. Schmidt, Vienna, three volumes, 1802–1812). In this work he made the first description of ''Nymphaea lotus'' var. ''thermalis''. He died in 1817 at Pest. The genus '' Kitaibelia'' of mallows was named after him by

Carl Ludwig von Willdenow Carl Ludwig Willdenow (22 August 1765 – 10 July 1812) was a German botanist, pharmacist, and plant taxonomist. He is considered one of the founders of phytogeography, the study of the geographic distribution of plants. Willdenow was also ...

. Species named after him: * '' Ablepharus kitaibelii'' Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Kitaibel", p. 142). * '' Cardamine kitaibelii'' * '' Kitaibela vitifolia'' * '' Knautia kitaibelii'' * '' Aquilegia kitaibelii''

References

External links

Biography in Hungarian

Plants named for Kitaibel at IPNI

Bibliography

Books by and about Paul Kitaibel on Worldcat.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kitaibel, Pal 19th-century Hungarian botanists Botanists from the Austrian Empire Hungarian chemists 18th-century Hungarian botanists People from Mattersburg District 1757 births 1817 deaths